Widgetized Section
Go to Admin » Appearance » Widgets » and move Gabfire Widget: Social into that MastheadOverlay zone
The Idea That an Armed Good Guy Can Stop an Armed Bad Guy is Not Borne Out by Reality
NRA Elementary School Armed Guards
When human beings have a conscience and nominal ethics, they feel guilt when they believe in their heart they violated a moral standard. Conversely, when people are without a conscience and lack a moral compass, instead of feeling guilt for their bad behavior, their first inclination is to blame others with fraudulent accusations to create negative perceptions and portray themselves in a positive light. On Friday when NRA leader Wayne La Pierre held a press conference to defend his organization’s thirty year crusade to put an armory in every home in America, he failed to acknowledge that the proliferation of military weapons in the population had an integral part in the massacre of 20 children and their teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
It is crucial for the pro-gun crowd to admit that if Adam Lanza’s mother, Nancy, did not have enough weapons for a two-man assault team easily accessible to her mentally imbalanced son, most Americans would have never heard of Sandy Hook, or Newtown Connecticut. As the leader of the gun crowd, La Pierre blamed “blood-soaked films,” “vicious, violent video games,” lawmakers behind gun-free school zones, and the “national media machine” for putting the nation’s children at risk. Apparently, if Adam Lanza never played video games, watched movies, or read a newspaper, his twisted mind would not have led him to grab his mother’s guns and go on a murderous rampage. La Pierre’s solution to mentally disturbed young men with an arsenal at their disposal was eliminating “gun-free zones” because as he said, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” and by La Pierre’s standards, there can never be enough good guys with guns. One can assume that good guys are trained to shoot firearms, do not have a criminal record, and use legally purchased assault weapons; like Adam Lanza.
La Pierre’s “National School Shield” program proposal is preposterous on its face and another ploy by the NRA to sell the public on the need for more guns as the only solution to more guns. However, the idea that a good guy can stop a bad guy is not borne out by reality. Law enforcement officers and military personnel go through extensive firearm training, and yet they do not always stop bad guys with guns from wreaking havoc and killing innocent human beings. In Pennsylvania on Saturday, a gunman killed three people and injured three state troopers in a gun battle before being killed by law enforcement. The point is, it took three trained “good guys” to stop one bad guy and La Pierre’s intention of Congress enacting a law placing armed guards in schools leads one to wonder if he meant an armed guard in every classroom or an assault team in every school. Whatever his intent, it is a costly proposition and the beneficiaries are the gun industry.
According to a report on NPR, the cost to taxpayers for each armed good guy is about $80,000 annually, and with over 69,000 primary and secondary schools in America, taxpayers will have to come up with over $5.5 billion to put one good guy in every school. It is a double benefit for the NRA and gun industry because not only does it mean 69,000 extra guns (at least) in public schools, millions of young impressionable minds will be indoctrinated into the gun culture as part of their daily education putting them on par with Afghan and Iraqi children brought up with a healthy respect for the power of an AK47 or RPG.
As troubling as the NRA’s suggestion is to education, it portends armed assault teams in every bar, mall, church, theatre, and public venue that has been marred by mass shootings and gun violence. La Pierre’s assertion that there is no public place worthy of the “gun free zone” designation, and his organization’s push to arm every citizen, will eventually lead to martial law with roving armed good guys looking for equally armed bad guys. What La Pierre is suggesting is the beginning of the police state and militarization of our society, or returning to the Wild West and re-emergence of Wyatt Earps and gunfights in public places. Last August, two NYPD officers opened fire on a suspected shooter killing him and wounding nine other innocent bystanders in a “good guy” versus “bad guy” confrontation in front of the Empire State Building in New York City. One shudders at the thought of an armed guard overreacting and opening fire in a high school hallway between classes, but that would be a constant fear parents, teachers, and students would face with armed vigilantes roaming our public schools with a license to kill.
The NRA and La Pierre’s response to the Sandy Hook massacre follows their typical response to mass shootings which is “Lie low at first, then slow-roll any legislative push for a response,” and up until La Pierre’s push for armed guards, it appeared they would be content to obstruct any gun control legislation in the wake of another mass shooting, and make no mistake, in La Pierre’s mind, all gun control is bad. In 2008, he proclaimed, “There is no element in the poisonous alchemy of the globalist gun ban crowd more dangerous to American freedom than the twin evils of gun-owner licensing and firearm registration.” Nevertheless, by 2011, Americans had registered 457,000 machine guns and 2.3 million other dangerous weapons including mines, bombs, missiles and grenades with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF). The BATF is the NRA’s No. 1 government “bad guy” after President Obama and the “national media machine” putting children at risk.
America’s problem with gun violence and mass shootings is guns, and not the lack thereof, but the NRA has the gun industry to protect and their 28 lobbyists who spent $2,205,000 in 2012 to promote more guns on America’s streets. After La Pierre’s statement the NRA was going to push to place armed guards in every school, they will be spending much more in 2013 to squash any reasonable gun control and to convince Republicans to enact their National School Shield Program at a cost of $5.5 billion they can hardly afford to appropriate for hiring or retaining teachers, or to repair schools, but it is likely they will line up behind the NRA’s effort to sell more guns. One expected La Pierre to shift the blame to everything except the proliferation of guns in America, but his proposal belied his earlier comment that the NRA was “prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again.” There was nothing meaningful in La Pierre’s proposal and the only thing it will contribute to is more guns in close proximity to children.
Education is difficult enough without teachers, administrators, and students seeing armed guards roaming the halls or checking in on every classroom. Following La Pierre’s logic, every public venue whether a church, theatre, or sporting event will be gun free zones replete with armed attendees exercising their 2nd Amendment right to stand their ground, and armed security teams standing at the ready to confront overzealous gun owners. It is a recipe for disaster and a return to the Wild West that may work well for Neanderthal gun nuts, but not in a 21st century civilized country. However, America is hardly civilized when one of the largest and most powerful lobbies in the nation fights ferociously to put an armory in every home and if they have their way, every school in America. It will put America on par with such advanced tribal cultures as Afghanistan and Uzbekistan where school safety, and the measure of a man, is determined by the AK47 or rocket-propelled grenade launcher they carry and something the NRA is desperate to mimic.
Related Posts :
It is natural for people to involuntarily react to repulsive stimulus, but it is also natural to revert ...
NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre held a presser regarding the NRA's position on gun control in response to the mas ...
One of the traits that separate human beings from machines is a conscious mental reaction such as anger ...
Every society develops characteristic features based on values, accepted social practices, and patterns ...
Ann Coulter suggested to Sean Hannity that the Sandy Hook school shooting would have been prevented if t ...
26 Responses to The Idea That an Armed Good Guy Can Stop an Armed Bad Guy is Not Borne Out by Reality
Public Service Advertisements
Reynardine
Dec. 24th, 2012 at 12:15 pm
My co-author, a retired policeman who spent many years working with the NYPD, said that if he had been carrying in such a situation, the only result of confronting a shooter armed with those weapons would have been to get his own head blown off. It would have been necessary to sneak up unseen and kill him before he could return fire, and by that time, the shooter could have massacred several classrooms full of children. He was pretty emphatic that such weapons need to be restricted to military personnel and SWAT teams trained in their use and free of head problems. The last thing police officers need is to answer what looks like a common domestic and find somebody- usually the male domestic partner- is an armed-to-the-teeth paranoid with military weapons, a situation that went down in Orange City a year or two back, and has become all too common elsewhere.
crystalwolfakacaligrl
Dec. 24th, 2012 at 12:16 pm
I guess we have to arm Fire-fighters & First responders now! (snark)
two Firefighters killed as gunman shoots them as they respond to a fire bit.ly/TgP2nn
(RIP)
What has this country come too?
Reynardine
Dec. 26th, 2012 at 10:04 am
It turned out a lot worse than that.
The shooter was a felon who had done time for murdering his grandmother. On this last occasion, he murdered his sister and burned down his house exactly so he could murder firefighters and burn out as many of his neighbors as possible. The weapon he used to shoot firefighters was the *exact same model* used to slaughter first-graders at Sandy Hook. The authorities have not released the rest of the content of his writings.
Lorenzo Rodriguez
Dec. 24th, 2012 at 12:17 pm
First – there is no 2nd Amendment right to “stand your ground”. The 2nd Amendment is about an armed citizen being able to overthrow an oppressive government and not much else.
Second – So what happens if no one with a gun shows up to stop the “bad guy”? Everybody dies until he runs out of bullets? And the he starts using the empty rifle as a club and takes more lives — then you hope for a “Good Guy” with a baseball bat?
While armed guards everywhere are not an ideal solution, WHAT is your 21st Century solution?
Reynardine
Dec. 24th, 2012 at 4:34 pm
Read on and learn.
stumptownhero
Dec. 25th, 2012 at 12:28 am
Lorenzo please STOP perpetuating the MYTH that the 2nd Amendment was intended to stop an oppressive government from infringing upon our freedoms. You can not find a SINGLE sentence to support that notion in the papers and notes on the formulation of the Constitution.
The CONDITIONAL sentence was inserted to make sure that a fledgling nation could rally an armed force like they did to stop the British and NOTHING else. Did you know that 9 of the original 13 Colonies did not have a guarantee for individual fire are ownership?
In Heller the Roberts court invented a personal right to own fire harms for DEFENSIVE purposes and non other than Fat Ton Scalia said that Congress had every RIGHT to limit and REGULATE those arms.
Churchlady
Dec. 24th, 2012 at 1:51 pm
Historians of the Old West have shown that the “gunfight in the OK Corral” was singular. What LaPierre and the NRA desire is a return to 1930s Hollywood. THAT is the only place armed shootouts regularly occurred.
We build our Second Amendment “freedom” rhetoric on fantasies – Hollywood lore, paranoia, anything but fact. LaPierre advocates a world where the hero stops the invader single handed, and while I enjoy the Bruce Willis types of super hero movies, they are utter rot as anything but fantasy.
These types of films are right up there with every myth, legend, and lore we have told ourselves since Greek and Roman mythology.
Did anyone believe he could slay dragons? Single handedly stop the minotaur? Cut down the advancing hordes of barbarians all alone? Slay the giant and slide down the beanstalk? No. We understood they were fairy tales. Hollywood made them seem real – but every pretend superhero wears makeup and reads a script. Who couldn’t win with it all predetermined to end within two hours? Pitiful we can’t separate fantasy from reality anymore. Interesting that several of the faux movie heroes – John Wayne, Charleton Heston, Bruce Willis, Churck Norris – were or are GOP and NRA supporters. They have believed their OWN hype. Wow.
But why do we think Lanza indulged in video games or even these movies when his mother, apparently a survivalist, bought the NRA self defense rap? I’d be far more inclined to think Lanza leared fear and justifiable homicide from her paranoia fed by the paranoia of the NRA. We ALL learn best at our parents’ knees – and in this case she learned from the NRA.
robyn ryan
Dec. 24th, 2012 at 2:17 pm
It’s John Ford’s fault. His version of American History on film is heavy on the religious idea of redemptive violence – killing wantonly to avenge the death of innocents.
For decades, action films started with a woman or child or military friend killed. Authorities are helpless. The ‘hero’ goes psycho and kills everything in sight to avenge them. He’s then a ‘real’ hero. Authority bows to them.
The meme of taking the law into one’s own hands, thus becoming a hero, plays out over and over.
The meme is changing, but the old school, low information population still clings to it – “killing makes me a hero.”
wiley
Dec. 24th, 2012 at 3:24 pm
In some of those man-avenging-the-death-of-his-family movies I have to wonder how much that psychopath really loved his family.
Sugapea
Dec. 24th, 2012 at 3:27 pm
Rmuse, You write so well! Check this out:
The RightWing is Living In A Dream World
www.youtube.com/watch?fea...!
mark
Dec. 24th, 2012 at 4:11 pm
Sorry, but I think your conclusion is bullshit.
I like to think of myself as a good guy, and I once DID turn back 2 guys who were intent on taking my car by drawing a revolver out of my coat pocket…They simply turned around and left without a word.
FWIW, this was 2 blocks from the police HQ right in the middle of town at 1PM…
mark
Life long liberal gun owner
Reynardine
Dec. 24th, 2012 at 4:38 pm
And they were not carrying assault weapons with rapid-fire capabilities and extended-fire clips. That is what we are talking about.
Sandra
Dec. 25th, 2012 at 11:39 pm
Obviously they didn’t have assault weapons or even a revolver on them or it might have turned out differently and you wouldn’t be around to post your nonsensical remark.
Someone ought to put an assault rifle up La Pierre’s azz and videotape his response.
Armsman
Dec. 24th, 2012 at 5:16 pm
How many of you in support of gun control actually have any experience with firearms, firearms training or combative tactics? With all due respect to the writer’s friend who is a police officer, he is speculating about a tactical situation he had no involvement in. It is as easily concluded that, had he been there, he could have found himself in the right position many times during the assault on the school to stop the shooter. These situations can go either way strictly depending on circumstances… but the more people who have solid situational awareness, the training and the fortitude to handle criminally intent individuals committing acts of violence, the better. Burying your head in the sand and hoping for the police to come save you will not work, whether we’re speaking of gun violence or other acts. How many of you have been the victims of a violent confrontation? Do you really believe that we, as a society could possible remove enough guns from the hands of criminals and mentally disturbed people to keep these kinds of tragedies from occurring? Do you realize that criminals hide their guns right now, out of normal paranoia that goes along with being a criminal? Do you believe that they will surrender their guns when the authorities come asking for them?
I was an armed teenager once. I was also a good-guy. As a teen I was in one of those situations that could have required the use of a firearm to protect life and limb; which we have a legal right to do. I defended my mother from a stalker who nearly beat down the door once his delusion progressed to that level. I didn’t use the gun that day, but it was close.
I’ve also always held a real disdain for people that would hurt others. I’ve taken many steps in my life to ensure I would have the know-how and ability to defend others in those grievous times of need. What have you done?
For the last 27 years, I’ve worn several different uniforms for various armed forces and various levels of government. I’ve been…
Shiva (Moderator)
Dec. 24th, 2012 at 5:47 pm
All that is wanted, is getting the so called assault rifles out of the stores and put a ban on them.
Strauighten up the NRA written designation for an assault rifle and dont be afraid to call it what it is. With few exceptions, we dont want guns taken away. Just ban the stuff that no one needs or is capable of mass murder in a very short time
Paws
Dec. 24th, 2012 at 8:43 pm
I don’t have any experience with firearms training, but I do have experience with the power of guns – and not in a good way. In spite of that, I still don’t own one; hell, I’ve never even held a gun and I never will.
From my position, however, I still support your owning a gun for protection or for hunting. I don’t want to infringe on your right to have that.
But you will never, ever convince me that someone needs to be armed to the teeth in order to protect themselves from a criminal in their home or on the street. You will never, ever convince me that a legitimate hunter needs an assault rifle or any other kind of weapon that is designed to kill as many people as possible in as short a time as possible.
I appreciate your position, I really, really do but
I refuse to believe that reasonable people cannot find a middle ground that lies somewhere between an outright ban on guns and a free-for all wild, wild west.
We can find that middle ground and when we do, we will find that common sense resides there.
Armsman
Dec. 24th, 2012 at 5:21 pm
…a law enforcement officer for over 16 years and on call 24/7 as a tactical officer for 13. I’ve also been a trainer in firearms, defensive tactics and officer survival for most of my career. In my career, I’ve studied countless officer involved shootings where both officers and criminals alike have won the confrontation. However, I’ve also witnessed countless numbers of video surveillance footage from across this great country showing armed citizens defending innocent people from armed criminals. A good guy with a gun most certainly CAN stop a bad guy with a guy. And folks, don’t fool your selves; bad guys will always have guns.
Reynardine
Dec. 24th, 2012 at 7:13 pm
Kindly pay attention to what is being said here instead of thinking with your dick. We are not talking about “firearms”. We are talking about military-type weapons capable of extended, rapid fire. If you want to go up against those with anything less than a SWAT team at your side, I congratulate you on your self-elimination from the gene pool.
Shiva (Moderator)
Dec. 24th, 2012 at 7:24 pm
Bad guys will always have guns? So will the guy next door who is far more likely to shoot you on a national average then any bad guy is
Paws
Dec. 24th, 2012 at 9:38 pm
“A good guy with a gun most certainly CAN stop a bad guy with a guy.”
Tell that to the police woman killed on duty in her patrol car in Wisconsin today. I think it is safe to assume that she was “a good guy” and the person who shot her is “a bad guy.”
Sorry but that kind of thinking, or the thinking that says we should have armed guards or armed teachers in schools, is just too simplistic for what is a very complex issue. The answer to a gun problem is not more guns.
We’re going to have to do better than that if we want to reduce gun violence.
Sabyen91
Dec. 24th, 2012 at 10:51 pm
A “good guy” is more likely to get killed with his own gun than to defend his life with it. A “good guy’s” children are much more likely to die from that gun than any home intruder. Your penis-wagging bullshit doesn’t track with reality.
Inez
Dec. 25th, 2012 at 9:21 pm
When the innocent owner of a firearm is approached by the perp with a gun who fires first?The innocent gun holder may be shaking in his(her)boots when confronted with this situation. REsults, both could be wounded or killed. IF you use two hands to control your aim and fire power you have a very short window of opportunity.
majii
Dec. 25th, 2012 at 8:28 pm
Trying to deal with our gun violence problem by buying more guns is like having the rat that gave you the bubonic plague in the first place come and bite you again after you’ve recovered from your first bout with the disease. In my example, you cannot rid yourself of the bubonic plague unless you attack the root cause of the problem, the carriers–rats. Eliminate the rats, no more bubonic plague. Same thing with assault weapons, hopefully, over time–make their sale and possession illegal, and going forward, there will be fewer people with them, therefore, fewer deaths due to assault weapons. Of course, one has to be capable of critical thinking in order to grasp the fact that if a person can’t get his/her hands on a certain thing, he/she won’t be able to use it. The federal government makes marijuana an illegal drug to possess, but I’ve never known anyone I’ve known to use marijuana commit mass murder. IMO, assault weapons pose a greater threat to public health than marijuana any day of the year.
Ruby Andrews-Lester
Dec. 25th, 2012 at 11:57 pm
It appears to me that some people miss the point, this young man was so down trodden, and abused and put down ( bullies I call them, be it from a family member, those are the worst kind, I know because my mother did it to me, and if I had not been strong enough in my convictions, who knows I may have done the same thing that this young man did to his mother, but I had love around me and psychologically, look a bit closer, maybe he was so mentally abused and compared to other children, day in and day out, his father and brother are gone and he is left with the one person who is supposed to love him, had broken his spirit, so instead, he was compared to…you’re not smart enough (look at your brother, he’s smart, he works with your father, you’ll never be anything, you can’t go to school with others because they are smarter than you etc, etc, etc.), So instead of putting a rope around his neck, he decided to get rid of all preconceived hurts by people who didn’t even know him..Gangs are a problem in our cities, they also bring guns in. they buy them outside in gun shows, and from gunrunners, they travel to other cities and buy firearms, it’s also dangerous to have guns in the home especially if you have someone who is not giving healthy lessons about life and love, then you have what just happened. This was not a healthy home. The one who hurt him most was the first one to go..and that’s not the end of the story. Everyone who takes out a group of innocent persons, is not always mentally ill, there is mental abuse just around the corner. I call it cruel and unjust punishment, two people got out, the other one got left behind..and caught all of that resentment. He didn’t just wake up one day to go out and do this, it was one more push…. that broke the camels back.
sidneyselt
Dec. 26th, 2012 at 11:07 am
Gun violence has been a part of “undesirable” communities for the nearly 60 years of my life, and the general public was not concerned…you run from the “dangers” and live in the suburbs where “all of that doesn’t happen.” Then the NRA promoted “save yourself with your own military style weapon” and gun sales at gun shows rose tremendously…and more folks died at their own hand, killing their family members and kids killing each other playing cowboys and soldiers. Now the suburbs and rural areas are not as safe as proposed…so NRA proposes more guns. Our society has been so violence prone…just think about all the wars the US continues to promote, and we see from where it stems…the earlier comments about super heroes and the Wild Wild West mentality is on point. Hollywood duped you and now you are living out a fantasy. More guns in the hands of people kill more people needlessly. Enough of the stupidity…get rid of the rats that brought you the plague, and the conditions that bred the rats in the first place, and we can see a significant difference in gun violence.
Karen Roberts
Dec. 26th, 2012 at 3:56 pm
I would like to say something about a good guy with a gun. Remember the story of a neighbor did when a teenage party next door got to loud. He called the cops to break it up. Which the cops did but a few kids ran away. Anyway that gun totting neighbor heard a noise down stairs near his back door. Apparently he talked a kid into coming out from hiding on his back inclosed porch area. As soon as he saw he was black he shot him. Then he claimed self -defense because he could of had a gun. YES YOUR NEIGHBOR CAN KILL AND IT WAS THE GUYS FAULT HE WAS THERE BECAUSE HE CALLED THE COPS IN THE FIRST PLACE!